Hillary, History, Hollywood and Some Healing
The Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia was supposed to be a coronation for Hillary Clinton, and springboard to a well-funded campaign against Donald Trump. But not everything went according to script. I attended as an observer. Here are 12 moments I thought shaped the convention, and why they will still matter come November.
1. A PHILADELPHIA FLIER
Philadelphia was an inspired choice for the Democrats. It’s America’s forgotten big city, a gritty place that’s stuck on a train line between Manhattan and DC rather than in the Rust Belt, where it might feel more at home. Philadelphia’s textbook image as the birthplace of American democracy is badly dated. It’s been nearly 250 years since the Liberty Bell rang out, and today the city is arguably more beloved for its brass-knuckle sports team and as a backdrop for Rocky, America’s signature underdog film.
The Democrats tried to capture Philly’s blue-collar aura, but the party is no longer the anti-establishment force it once was. Away from Philly’s rough edges, the convention was a posh affair—more so than the Republican gathering in Cleveland a week earlier. More chauffeured SUVs in front of the big hotels. More private jets. More invitation-only cocktail parties. It was a stark contrast to Philadelphia’s standing as the most impoverished big city in the U.S.; some 186,000 people here live on a household income of $12,000 or less a year.
2. FIRST LADY OF INSPIRATION
Race remains America’s existential challenge, and the Democratic Party its voice on civil rights. The 2016 campaign is more racially divided than perhaps any election since 1968, when race riots threatened the DNC in Chicago and gave Richard Nixon a platform for law and order.
Sensing a new mood in America, the Republican convention was rife with fear and acrimony.
The Democrats pulled out every stop to present a more diverse face. Former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown was there. So was Jesse Jackson. Cory Booker, the New Jersey senator and a rising star in the party, gave a fiery speech on Tuesday night, followed by nine women from Mothers of the Movement, who had lost children to racially charged violence.
The tone could have been negative—the issues are—were it not for Michelle Obama’s opening-night appearance. While most convention-goers were expecting someone like Bill Clinton or Barack Obama to set the gold standard for speeches, the First Lady did. In a moment that brought silence to the arena, she talked of her daughters playing with their dogs on the front lawn of the White House—“a house built by slaves.” It was more powerful than any of the rhetoric at either convention about black or blue lives mattering. It was a mother showing how far America had come.
In a political season that has been the ugliest in decades, Michelle Obama re-established a moral high ground. Of the character attacks her family has endured, her take was this: “When they go low, we go high.” For those Democrats old enough to remember the race wars, it was a humbling end to a long journey from Chicago ’68, to hear a black First Lady speak of healing rather than pain, and unity rather than division. She may yet be remembered as the star of Philadelphia ’16. Her inspiration will be even more critical to getting African-Americans to vote in large numbers.
3. HOLLYWOOD EAST
The Democrats have long been the party of Hollywood, but never more so than this year. The entertainment industry descended on the convention and didn’t shy away from descriptions of a fascist America, should Trump win. On the first night, a J.J. Abrams video introduced Michelle Obama. James Cameron supplied another short film on climate change. Sarah Silverman, the comic voice of millennials (despite her age), took to the microphone to tell her fellow Sanders supporters to vote for Clinton “with gusto.” When she was met with some boos, she told the “Bernie or Bust” crowd: “You’re being ridiculous.” Elizabeth Banks of Hunger Games fame MC’d one of the evenings, using the stage to spoof Trump’s fog-laden convention entrance. Demi Levato and Eva Longoria spoke. Boyz II Men, Alicia Keyes and Lenny Kravitz sang. The final night featured Carole King and Katy Perry.
It was a deliberate and startling contrast to Cleveland, where the GOP struggled to get any Hollywood wattage, settling instead for a roster of has-beens. Does it matter? The DNC’s stars, no doubt, pumped up delegates and helped oil the Clinton fundraising machine, which was humming in Philadelphia. The big names may also explain why the Democratic convention did better in TV ratings than the Republicans did. But in the swing states where the election will be decided, the parade of the powerful may only reinforce the view that a bicoastal elite has, in the words of Elizabeth Warren, rigged the system.
4. PEAK PROGRESSIVE
For a quarter century, the Democrats have been comfortable with the so-called neoliberal consensus. It’s been pro-business, pro-trade, pro-market, a position shaped by Robert Rubin, the Goldman Sachs executive who was Bill Clinton’s Treasury Secretary. But as one delegate noted, the Rubin wing of the party was nowhere to be seen in Philadelphia. They’d been pushed aside by the Bernie Sanders wing, which before the convention had carried out a quiet coup in the back rooms of the Democratic Party. The progressives had taken over the party platform. And they did nothing to conceal their delight on the opening night in Philadelphia.
Warren, the Massachusetts senator who’s the party’s progressive standard-bearer, used her prime-time slot to make her comments about the system being rigged. She was followed by Sanders, who has fundamentally altered the party and didn’t leave behind any of his campaign fire. In agreeing to endorse Clinton and bring his legions of Philadelphia, the Vermont senator was able to insert much of his thinking in what he called the “most progressive platform in Democratic history."
The party is now committed to tuition-free education at in-state public colleges and universities, although only for children of families earning less than $125,000 a year. The platform also calls for expanded Social Security and 12 weeks paid family and medical leave. On criminal justice issues, the party hewed close to Black Lives Matter, calling for reforms to mandatory minimum sentences and an end to private prisons. On economic issues, it wants a financial transaction tax to reduce speculation, a “multimillionaire surtax” and an end to the “carried interest” deduction that many companies use to reduce taxes. Perhaps the biggest victory for the progressives was the endorsement of the Fight for 15 campaign, calling for a federal minimum wage of $15 an hour.
In his Monday night speech to the convention, Sanders spoke of the 47 million Americans living in poverty, and the 40-year decline of the middle class: “This election is about ending the grotesque level of income inequality in America,” he said. “It is not moral, it is not acceptable, it is not sustainable.”
5. CEDE THE BERN
While Bernie Sanders arrived in Philadelphia like the presumptive nominee — “our revolution continues,” he said on the first day — his grip on power seemed to loosen as the week wore on. It was a running sore point. Still bitter about their defeat, Sanders’ followers threatened to upend the convention. They jeered at every mention of Clinton, and staged protests outside the arena.
One of the Democrats’ risks this fall is that the millions of millennials who joined #FeelTheBern will stay home on election day. In a moment of magnanimity toward Clinton, Sanders warned them of the consequences, including a conservative Supreme Court for the rest of their working lives, should Clinton lose. “Hillary Clinton must become the next president of the United States,” he implored. On Tuesday, Sanders took to the arena floor during the roll call of state delegations, and in an act that may become his signature to the party, called on the convention chair to halt the counting and acclaim his rival. The crowd roared with approval.
From a distance, Trump said Sanders looked exhausted. After the best political year of his life, his Philadelphia performance was indeed not his finest. Perhaps it’s the age-old challenge for rebels, that it’s easier to energize a crowd with confrontation than it is with compromise. For Clinton’s sake, he’ll need to regain the Bern before he hits the campaign trail for her.
6. THE NEW ENERGY CRISIS
While the election may be determined by character and personality, energy will be one of the key issues that separate the parties. The Republicans have taken a pro-energy position, hoping support for self-reliance, fracking and offshore drilling will help them win some swing states, notably Ohio, Pennsylvania and Colorado. The party dropped all mention of climate change from its platform.
The Democrats rolled out a platform that attacks Big Oil, threatens to press criminal charges against executives who spread doubt about climate change, and raises the bar for fracking projects. On the last point, some Democrats are dancing gingerly. Colorado governor John Hickenlooper, who faces re-election in 2018, said many of his supporters own small packages of mineral rights and would see their retirement savings evaporate if fracking were banned. The pro-fracking view among Democrats, as well as support for coal mining, is even stronger in western Pennsylvania, where Clinton may find herself fighting for counties the Democrats once held. The growing American divide on energy could make it more competitive.
7. TRADING PLACES
If the Trans Pacific Partnership dies, it will be Bernie Sanders’ doing. Every night on the convention floor, his followers tried to get in front of TV cameras with anti-TPP signs, chanting “jobs for you and me, say no to the TPP.” Sanders’ populist views during the primaries had already forced Clinton to go against the Obama administration and vow to kill the pact. He reinforced the position at the convention, even though the White House had convinced the platform committee to omit specific opposition to TPP from the party platform.
For the Sanders supporters, doubts linger about Clinton’s intentions over the trade deal. The conspiracy theories blew into overdrive after Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe, a close friend for decades of both Clintons, spoke positively about trade during his keynote address. He then told reporters he suspects Clinton will approve some version of TPP in the end. “I worry that if we don’t do TPP, at some point China’s going to break the rules -- but Hillary understands this,” McAuliffe told Politico. “Once the election’s over, and we sit down on trade, people understand a couple things we want to fix on it but going forward we got to build a global economy.”
It was the bombshell of the convention, forcing Clinton aides to take to Twitter to stress her objections to the deal. John Podesta, her campaign chair, tweeted: “Love Gov. McAuliffe, but he got this one flat wrong. Hillary opposes TPP BEFORE and AFTER the election. Period. Full stop.” Her foreign policy adviser Neera Tanden told a trade briefing: “I want to be crystal, crystal, crystal clear, Hillary is opposed to the TPP.” Gene Sperling, one of her top economics advisers, chimed in: “Let me be clear: She is against TPP.”
While Trump is also against TPP, he may seize on any Clinton prevarications to reach out to the Sanders crowd—and to convince independents that she’s not trustworthy.
8. THE WAR OF INDEPENDENTS
Wednesday has become the cruelest night for Donald Trump. Last week, Republican runner-up Ted Cruz used his appearance to essentially urge conservatives not to vote for Trump. This week, Michael Bloomberg got a prime-time slot to eviscerate the GOP candidate.
Bloomberg, the billionaire media mogul and former New York mayor, is king of the independents. A lifelong Democrat, he bolted to the Republicans in 2001, in time for his mayoralty campaign. He went independent in 2009. In Philadelphia, he launched into a speech that was worth more to Clinton than money. It was New York rough. One billionaire to another. “I’m a New Yorker, and I know a con when I see one.” “Trump’s business plan is a disaster in the making.” “Trump is a risky, reckless and radical choice.” And the punch to the nose: “Trump says he wants to run the nation like he’s run his business. God help us.”
U.S. election campaigns tend to get very excited about independents. Pew Research says they account for 39% of the electorate versus 32% who say they are Democrats and 23% who identify as Republican. But the “I” brigade is fairly predictable, voting the same way, cycle after cycle, or staying home, cycle after cycle. They tend to be free-market pragmatists with soft moral convictions. With perhaps 100 million independents in play, the Republican convention spotlighted their own: Peter Thiel, the billionaire PayPal founder and filmmaker who savaged Clinton’s economic plan as anti-capitalist, a key issue for independents. The Democrats seem to think they can counter with the fitness-to-govern question. They might even use the Bloomberg line: “Let’s elect a sane, competent person.”
9. TRUST US, TRUST HER
Hillary Clinton is what her campaign chair John Podesta calls “the least-known best-known person in America.” Philadelphia was designed to change that. The first draft of her story for the convention didn’t work so well. Her closest friends and allies portrayed her as someone who you’d want to hire to run a business, not inspire a nation. “Hardest working person I’ve ever known,” said Joe Biden. “She gets stuff done,” said Michael Nutter, a former Philadelphia mayor. “She never, ever quits,” said her former boss Barack Obama. Not the stuff of TV slogans.
And then there’s the competence line. “There has never been a man or a woman -- not me, not Bill, nobody -- more qualified than Hillary Clinton to serve as president of the United States of America," Obama said. The well-meaning comments ran the risk of suggesting to voters they just shut up and vote—the very tone that turned off Sanders supporters who felt the party establishment had made the choice for them.
To shape a different image, Bill Clinton told a more personal story about his wife, “my best friend.” Stories of her working years as a children’s defence lawyer seemed to inspire the crowd. The Clintons’ old Arkansas friend, movie actress Mary Steenburgen, described a woman who liked to laugh, “especially at herself.” But even Steenburgen told a story of work and resilience—not stuff that would make voters want to have a beer with Clinton.
Clinton’s 36-year-old daughter Chelsea came closest with a picture of a Clinton we hardly know—a working mother who wrote Chelsea personal notes every day she was on the road, a doting grandmother who delayed events so she could Facetime with her grandkids, a defeated political activist who found solace in family movie nights.
Clinton doesn’t have the personal narrative of Obama, and against Trump may not need it. But if he surges, we will be seeing and hearing a lot more from Chelsea. In a tight race, family matters.
10. HIM: THE DIVISIVE NAME THAT WON’T BE ON ANY BALLOT
The convention was always going to be an awkward dance between an outgoing president who wants to celebrate his record, and a potential president who wants to be seen as a change maker. Obama was the star Wednesday night, filling his prime time slot with grace and conviction. In many ways, the crowd was his, having travelled from the “Yes We Can” tour of 2008 to the culture wars of 2016. His record is what will determine Clinton’s fate. Do Americans feel better—safer, happier, stronger—than before Obama won? It depends on how well they remember the financial crisis.
While Obama gave a vigorous defence of his record, on job creation, health care, social security, gay rights and more, he did Clinton a big favour by devoting the thrust of his speech to Donald Trump. It was perhaps unprecedented for a sitting President to use a political convention to attack someone nominated for the Oval Office. Obama didn’t hold back, saying Trump was far more than a political threat. “He’s selling the American people short. We are not a fragile people, we’re not a frightful people. Our power doesn’t come from some self-declared saviour promising that he alone can restore order as long as we do things his way. We don’t look to be ruled.”
Come fall, that last line may quietly haunt Clinton. The independents who she’s trying to win don’t like to be ruled, and yet she used the convention to present an activist agenda that could see more government, not less, than the Obama years. If Trump can make her as equally disliked as she will try to make him, and if the economy is doing okay and there’s no major terrorist attack — all big ‘ifs” — the ballot question could be: After eight years of Obama, do you want more of him? If asked today, Americans would be pretty evenly split.
11. THEM: A RAINBOW COALITION OVER TRUMP
The Republicans trotted out people to attack Clinton’s integrity and character. The Democrats gave as good as they got, especially on the last evening of the convention. With the arena overflowing and a large TV audience tuned in for Clinton, out came a succession of critics to savage Trump, including some Republicans who said they would vote Democrat for the first time. Sarah McBride, the first transgendered person to address a national political convention, warned of an America in which there’d be “only one way to love.”
A group of military veterans, led by retired General John Allen, who commanded U.S. forces in Afghanistan, filled the stage to say they felt Clinton was the only candidate fit to be commander-in-chief — a stunning rebuke for Trump who presents himself as a military hawk. In response to Trump’s repeated support for waterboarding, Allen said “our forces will not be used as an instrument of torture.”
The show of military force was matched by a show of moral force, when the father of a fallen Muslim army captain brought the arena to silence with a stinging indictment of Trump and his divisive comments on Muslims. Khizr Khan, whose son was killed in Iraq in 2004, looked into the TV cameras and asked Trump: "Have you ever been to Arlington cemetery? Go look at the graves of brave patriots who died defending the United States of America. You will see all faiths, genders and ethnicities. You have sacrificed nothing and no one.” The elder Khan, who moved to the U.S. nearly 40 years ago, said he spoke on behalf of “patriotic American Muslims” when he urged all immigrants and Muslims “to vote for the healer, not the divider.”
12. HER: WHAT IF SHE’S THE RIGHT PERSON ON THE WRONG TRACK?
The week always would come down to Hillary. The convention had heard several of the best speeches in modern convention history. Michelle Obama on the strength of race and the roots of integrity. Bill Clinton on the woman he’s known for 45 years. Joe Biden on the courage to lose and to lead. Barack Obama on the audacity of America. And Chelsea Clinton, the woman who knows the woman in question best, on the modern model of motherhood. Could Hillary Rodham Clinton match them?
She was welcomed to the stage with the most enthusiastic ovation of the week, but the arena quickly turned raucous as Sanders supporters yelled “No More War.” They were drowned out by chants of “Hillary” and “USA, USA.” The candidate pushed through the noise, telling the audience of the values shaped by her mother Dorothy. She laid out her vision for America, a country of diversity and inclusion, of people working together and of public policy designed to help those in need. If elected, her first priority will be an American jobs program, linked to massive infrastructure projects. She also pledged to Sanders supporters to appoint Supreme Court judges who would limit the political reach of special interest groups.
On election day, though, the choice will come down to two questions: Is the U.S. on the right or wrong track? And which of the two candidates do you dislike least? Polls suggest more Americans are convinced it’s on the wrong track. Which mean that Clinton will have to attack Trump as much as she stresses hope over fear.
For a woman who has prepared for decades for this moment, who has the support of most policy experts, and who has a well-oiled election machine, it can only be exasperating. That’s politics.
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The arrival of history could be felt at every turn in the convention. Never has a woman come this close to the world's most powerful position. The evening Clinton was officially nominated, an extraordinary video showed all the presidents (men, of course) in a glass-like montage that was shattered to reveal .... Hillary. The evening she spoke to accept the nomination, the welcome was ecstatic, especially from women. Many had been campaigning for women's rights for half a century. Some hadn't been born when Clinton first moved into the White House. But for millennial women who may take gender equality for granted and want a greater focus on, say, climate change, Clinton's final struggle to the White House continues.
Friday morning, as clean-up crews took over the convention site, Clinton and running mate Tim Kaine left Philadelphia the old-fashioned way—in a bus. Needing to tack away from their progressive policies and Hollywood image, the Democrats will tour the heartland and speak directly to working class anger. It worked for her husband Bill and his running mate Al Gore, who left their 1992 convention in New York for a road trip through Middle America. They were young and relatively unknown. Hillary Clinton’s challenge is just the opposite. She needs to convince voters she’s no Apollo Creed, the character in Rocky who was the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world. Americans love champions. They just like their champions a lot more when they start as underdogs. Philadelphia-style.
Chief of Staff
8yThoughtful observations that will be watched over the next 100 days.
it was a week of great political oratory...those speechwriters should be celebrating for creating some inspirational and memorable lines
Well worth the read! I do not believe I am putting hope above reason when I note that (as Harpers reported in January) the centre of American politics has shifted decisively left. More millennials believe in socialism (however they define it) than capitalist. There is a 20% plus gap between views of millennials and boomers on key issues like gay marriage, women in the workplace, interfaith marriage, etc. There are more than 8 million additional Hispanic voters than when Bush 43 was elected last in 2004. What may have been too outside the mainstream in 2004 or 2008, plays much better in 2016. As John's article states, keeping the Millennials engaged to vote for Hillary in November, could be crucial.